The results are in: Undergraduate Student Government presidential candidate Bryan Fernandez and vice president candidate Brianna Sanchez have won the election by 152 votes.
The duo campaigned on creating an administration that provides a voice for different campus communities. Additionally, they said they aim to create a USC that “C.A.R.E.S about our students,” with the acronym spelling out community, accessibility, representation and equity.
This election cycle marks the first time USG has deviated from the plurality voting system. This year, ranked-choice voting was adopted for the presidential contest.
In a ranked-choice voting system, instead of casting a ballot for one top choice, voters can rank multiple candidates. Voters select which candidate is their first choice, then which one is their second choice and so on until every single candidate has been ranked.
“I think ranked choice voting was a huge success this year,” USG Chief Justice Nivea Krishnan wrote in a statement to Annenberg Media. “We reached comparable turnout levels to previous years despite having an entirely different voting interface and process, and I think that speaks to the quality of our USG-led outreach by our Judicial Council, Communications Department, and every USG member who helped get out the vote.”
The ranked-choice voting also comes with a majority voting rule. In majority voting, a winner is only declared when a candidate wins more than half of all votes cast. If none of the candidates reach a majority, then students’ second-ranked votes are taken into account, which is what happened in this election cycle.
The total number of votes cast for this race was 4,099, meaning that a presidential ticket needed at least 2,050 votes to win, per the new majority voting system.
However, none of the presidential tickets reached that threshold — that’s where ranked-choice voting comes into play.
To break the impasse and determine a winner in a ranked-choice and majority voting, the ticket that receives the fewest first-choice votes gets eliminated — which was Julianna Melendez and Klarissa Palacios.
All the votes that ranked Melendez and Palacios first were redistributed to the other candidates based on their second-choice ranking.
Of those 1,031 votes, 596 went to Fernandez and Sanchez and 384 votes went to Sam Stack and Christian Shaw. Another 51 of those ballots didn’t rank any other candidate, so these votes were not redistributed.
The votes were then retallied, leaving Fernandez and Sanchez with a total of 2,100 votes. Stack and Shaw ended up with 1,948. This pushed Fernandez and Sanchez past the 2,050 majority threshold to become next year’s USG president and vice president.
Fernandez and Sanchez received 1,504 first-ranked votes, Stack and Shaw received 1,564 first-ranked votes and Melendez and Palacios received 1,031 first-ranked votes. Although Stack and Shaw received the most first-place votes, they did not reach the 2,050 votes needed to win.
USG formerly used plurality voting to determine its presidential winners. Plurality voting is when voters only cast a ballot for their top choice candidate. Whichever candidate wins the most votes overall -- even if it’s only by a single vote -- wins the election.
Sanchez, a sophomore majoring in legal studies, said in a past interview with Annenberg Media that she wants to ensure the legislative process runs smoothly and that free testing for sexually transmitted infections — a program she pushed for alongside USG senator Rudra Saigal — continues.
Fernandez, a sophomore studying public policy, wants to change the format of the campus town hall meetings to make them more welcoming and comfortable. In a previous interview with Annenberg Media, Fernandez pointed out that students may feel “intimidated” by the current format.
For the senatorial race, there were 12 open spots for the 2024-2025 senate, but only 11 students ran. All 11 candidates were elected.
Heavy rains partially impacted voting for the 2024 USG election last week, as all four polling locations were temporarily moved inside. Additionally, one of the food vendors — that USG commissioned to offer students a free treat if they showed proof of voting — had to come back another day, thereby temporarily stripping students of their ability to enjoy shaved ice.
In an effort to boost voter turnout, USG extended the voting period from Friday, Feb. 23, to Sunday, Feb. 25. On Sunday evening, USG posted on their Instagram and sent out a mass email to all undergraduate students that “ten lucky voters” will receive a $100 Amazon gift card.
“I think turnout could have reached historic highs if more work was done by candidates to reach out to [Recognized Student Organizations] and cultural assemblies during the campaign period,” Krishnan wrote. “Candidate visibility was lower than in past years, and I think the extra final push that the Judicial Council had to make during the voting period speaks to the fact that candidates and the way they campaign play an outsized role in driving voter turnout.”
This year’s total voter turnout of 4,306 ballots is slightly higher than the 2023 election, in which 4,105 ballots were cast.
The election results will be certified on March 6 by the Director of Campus Activities.
Correction: A previous version of this story said that the new ranked choice voting system was used for both the presidential and senate races. Only the presidential election used ranked choice voting, while the senate race remained a plurality-based system.